February 24, 2009

jonCates' COPY-IT-RIGHT project

The early experimental video art scene in Chicago,
and its indispensability in developing an understanding of contemporary
New Media practices, is something that I learned from jonCates and that
jonCates learned from Phil Morton. Well, maybe it's not quite that
simple, but that is one possible set of connections that can be traced
from jonCates' COPY-IT-RIGHT project.

The Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive was initiated in 2007 by jonCates and is housed in The Film, Video & New Media Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
It exists to organize and freely distribute Phil Morton's new media
artwork, and also to perpetuate the COPY-IT-RIGHT ideal that Morton
advocated. As you can read on the blog for the COPY-IT-RIGHT project,
Morton sought to disseminate an anti-copyright attitude towards media
and its distribution, especially artwork that is based in digital
technologies. By referencing these ideals under the phrase
'COPY-IT-RIGHT', Morton sought to completely replace ingrained notions
of copyright law by re-framing the term's meaning as a call to action.
Make copies! It's the right thing to do! jonCates states that
COPY-IT-RIGHT ranges in meaning from copyright reform to pro-piracy.
"The COPY-IT-RIGHT ethic is presented by Morton as a value, even as a
moral imperative, to share and freely exchange media," he said.

jonCates began researching Morton's work shortly before he learned of Morton's death from Jane Veeder,
one of Morton's collaborators. Veeder put him in contact with Morton's
surviving partner, Barb Abramo, who later entrusted all of Morton's
archived material to him. jonCates said that this took place after a
couple years of correspondence and a developed understanding. The
creation of the archive is, "a personal and subjective process that
involves developing trust and friendships."

The personal degrees of separation enabling this archive, however,
should not betray it's larger goal, which, according to jonCates, is to
facilitate discourse. "This discursive work is intended to be
productive, engendering the development of theory/practices that are
informed by these archives and contributing to ongoing conversations,"
he states. The archive is a central point of investigation, but also
exists as a mediating voice within existing networks and issues, in
both form and content. The intermingling of the archive's personal and
institutional roots is exemplary of how individual archives might begin
to bridge recognized authority and the histories that are important to
individuals.

Because COPY-IT-RIGHT is a project that seeks to freely distribute
media art, as well as create a networked discourse around it, we are
invited to explore ideas such as influence and the generative origins
of our knowledge. This process eclipses antiquated visions of the
archive as a static source of 'knowledge' or 'history'.

COPY-IT-RIGHT's latest web entry is a transcript of a talk jonCates
gave at McGill University on anti-copyright approaches to media. In
that talk, he refers to "the artistic role of archives". jonCates
provided some further examples of "artistic archives", such as Emily Jacir's Material for a Film and Walid Raad'sThe Atlas Group,
which both seek to illuminate history and contemporary contexts through
materials that might not be automatically absorbed into our stateliest
cultural institutions. They represent an independent approach to
information collection, at the same time that they contain material
that is itself a challenge to dominant cultural and historical
knowledge. Likewise, COPY-IT-RIGHT is a lesser-voiced exploration of
Chicagoâ€™s art history, but also an open-ended call to discuss and
develop material on the future of media copyright attitudes.

The COPY-IT-RIGHT project, as mentioned, also exists to provide entry
into Morton's media art, for study or copy. The work he did with Dan
Sandin, creator of the Sandin Image Processor - an analog computer for
video image processing. Morton and Sandin's "Distribution Religion" is
a project that documents the process of duplicating the Sandin Image
Processor. Morton wanted to create a duplicate of the processor itself,
and in the process, created an outline of the method for others. The
documentation became part of the copying process, and also includes
remarks on the COPY-IT-RIGHT ethic.

Comments

The early experimental video art scene in Chicago,
and its indispensability in developing an understanding of contemporary
New Media practices, is something that I learned from jonCates and that
jonCates learned from Phil Morton. Well, maybe it's not quite that
simple, but that is one possible set of connections that can be traced
from jonCates' COPY-IT-RIGHT project.

The Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive was initiated in 2007 by jonCates and is housed in The Film, Video & New Media Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
It exists to organize and freely distribute Phil Morton's new media
artwork, and also to perpetuate the COPY-IT-RIGHT ideal that Morton
advocated. As you can read on the blog for the COPY-IT-RIGHT project,
Morton sought to disseminate an anti-copyright attitude towards media
and its distribution, especially artwork that is based in digital
technologies. By referencing these ideals under the phrase
'COPY-IT-RIGHT', Morton sought to completely replace ingrained notions
of copyright law by re-framing the term's meaning as a call to action.
Make copies! It's the right thing to do! jonCates states that
COPY-IT-RIGHT ranges in meaning from copyright reform to pro-piracy.
"The COPY-IT-RIGHT ethic is presented by Morton as a value, even as a
moral imperative, to share and freely exchange media," he said.

jonCates began researching Morton's work shortly before he learned of Morton's death from Jane Veeder,
one of Morton's collaborators. Veeder put him in contact with Morton's
surviving partner, Barb Abramo, who later entrusted all of Morton's
archived material to him. jonCates said that this took place after a
couple years of correspondence and a developed understanding. The
creation of the archive is, "a personal and subjective process that
involves developing trust and friendships."

The personal degrees of separation enabling this archive, however,
should not betray it's larger goal, which, according to jonCates, is to
facilitate discourse. "This discursive work is intended to be
productive, engendering the development of theory/practices that are
informed by these archives and contributing to ongoing conversations,"
he states. The archive is a central point of investigation, but also
exists as a mediating voice within existing networks and issues, in
both form and content. The intermingling of the archive's personal and
institutional roots is exemplary of how individual archives might begin
to bridge recognized authority and the histories that are important to
individuals.

Because COPY-IT-RIGHT is a project that seeks to freely distribute
media art, as well as create a networked discourse around it, we are
invited to explore ideas such as influence and the generative origins
of our knowledge. This process eclipses antiquated visions of the
archive as a static source of 'knowledge' or 'history'.

COPY-IT-RIGHT's latest web entry is a transcript of a talk jonCates
gave at McGill University on anti-copyright approaches to media. In
that talk, he refers to "the artistic role of archives". jonCates
provided some further examples of "artistic archives", such as Emily Jacir's Material for a Film and Walid Raad'sThe Atlas Group,
which both seek to illuminate history and contemporary contexts through
materials that might not be automatically absorbed into our stateliest
cultural institutions. They represent an independent approach to
information collection, at the same time that they contain material
that is itself a challenge to dominant cultural and historical
knowledge. Likewise, COPY-IT-RIGHT is a lesser-voiced exploration of
Chicagoâ€™s art history, but also an open-ended call to discuss and
develop material on the future of media copyright attitudes.

The COPY-IT-RIGHT project, as mentioned, also exists to provide entry
into Morton's media art, for study or copy. The work he did with Dan
Sandin, creator of the Sandin Image Processor - an analog computer for
video image processing. Morton and Sandin's "Distribution Religion" is
a project that documents the process of duplicating the Sandin Image
Processor. Morton wanted to create a duplicate of the processor itself,
and in the process, created an outline of the method for others. The
documentation became part of the copying process, and also includes
remarks on the COPY-IT-RIGHT ethic.